Eurogamer has word from id Software's Todd Hollenshead that they will not be licensing out the Tech 5 engine being used for RAGE to third parties. At one point the plan was to license the engine, but after id was acquired by Zenimax it was decided that the engine would be reserved for id's and Bethesda's internal development. "It's going to be used within ZeniMax, so we're not going to license it to external parties," Hollenshead told Eurogamer at QuakeCon today. "It's like, look, this is a competitive advantage and we want to keep it within games we publish - not necessarily exclusively to id or id titles, but if you're going to make a game with id Tech 5 then it needs to be published by Bethesda, which I think is a fair thing."

maybe i need to make this clearer, the internal IW engine is BASED on opensource Id Tech3 code. (Hence the Id being mentioned in the credits on the game); it is not a Tech3 license - however had ID not chosen to open source there engine things would be very different.

IW did not build a engine from the ground up, they took open source tech3, and modernised it for there own use.

thats the distinction, no matter how they sell it to you, your playing something that started out as a tech3 implementation. thesedays its obviously different; however if you've done any playing about with MW2 on a technical level you will see how its evolved.

in essance you are not wrong, but you dont seem to be aware of the distinction that people are making when they say "based on", its not licensed tech3, but it most certainly is based on it.

Everyone on Bluesnews is synical, get over it. edit: i cant spell, this is my disclaimer.

Also, Wikipedia is not infallible. I know someone on the CoD Black Ops Team, he states they're still using engines based on id Tech 3, and also that MW2 and MW1 appear to have been so as well. As well as WaW and earlier titles.

which wikipedia are you reading? COD2 is not on the list. also, your claiming the pcgamer article from sept 2005 is wrong? based on "knowing someone"? pcgamer interviewed the founders of IW regarding their abandonment of the quake engine in favor of their own in house engine.

Beamer wrote on Aug 13, 2010, 11:03:3) This is entirely because id is too far behind to compete on tools and support and the cost of getting into that game now is extremely high.

Except they've shown the tools and they look pretty solid.

"...id has had a deserved reputation for producing great technology with not so great tools...""...but now as we've grown in headcount ... we've hired full time tools programmers and support programmers..."http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jz7Qe9ZcEI

Edit: I do kind of agree with you in part, not about tools being the issue obviously, but support.Supporting a large amount of engine licensees isn't something either company wants to do. Even prior to the zenimax buyout id said they only wanted a few licences.

Also, Wikipedia is not infallible. I know someone on the CoD Black Ops Team, he states they're still using engines based on id Tech 3, and also that MW2 and MW1 appear to have been so as well. As well as WaW and earlier titles.

Beamer wrote on Aug 13, 2010, 11:03:Speaking of looks, stop whining about all UE3 games looking alike. My god, it's like a broken record. No matter how many times you're told it's due to a lack of artist creativity, not an engine flaw, you guys go back to it. You're saying all these games look alike: http://udk.com/showcase ?

Parallax Abstraction wrote on Aug 13, 2010, 07:21:No they haven't. If you look in the credits of World at War, Modern Warfare and I believe Modern Warfare 2, it still says "portions of this software are copyright id Software, Inc." They've obviously heavily modified the tech but it is still id Tech underneath and unless Infinity Ward bought a lifetime perpetual license, id is likely still getting a small cut of every Call of Duty game sold.

read the sept issue of pcgamer from 2005. they explained why they created their own graphics engine for COD2. the commands used on the console were kept similar to the quake engine on the multiplayer probably to make the transition easier for fans of the game. but the graphics were all in house. you think id software would allow a high profile game to ship out without giving them a splash screen at the opening of the game if the graphics was using id tech? nope.

1) No one buys an engine based on how it "looks." No one. You buy an engine based on its toolkit. 2) This isn't tactical by Zenimax to stop others from using it for some kind of competitive advantage - that's retarded. Engine licensing is an enormously profitable business, and would certainly bring in vastly more income than any advantage of having Elder Scrolls on id tech 5. Elder Scrolls will sell millions regardless.3) This is entirely because id is too far behind to compete on tools and support and the cost of getting into that game now is extremely high.4) Speaking of looks, stop whining about all UE3 games looking alike. My god, it's like a broken record. No matter how many times you're told it's due to a lack of artist creativity, not an engine flaw, you guys go back to it. You're saying all these games look alike: http://udk.com/showcase ?

This is about tools and support. Nothing else. Stop trying to make it more than it is. id never really pushed tools and support because they never really needed to - they were the only true player in the game. If you remember, the main method of designing Quake levels was using a third person program, one that was then snatched up by Valve. Epic realized the need for tools and support and built out a huge support network and focused heavily on tools. id never saw the need. Net result: id tech 4 didn't attract much licensing interest. id doesn't care much, they'd rather focus on where they focus than invest the enormous amount of time and resources into making tools incredibly user-friendly and building up a vast amount of tutorials and wikis.

Again, this isn't about how good the tech looks. This isn't about having a competitive advantage. This isn't about what kind of scenes the engine can or cannot do. This isn't about any of that crap. It's about id never seeing a reason to invest in tools and support and not being able to win customers against companies that put dozens of employees into those areas.

Gotta agree with Fion here. Everyone is hellbent on bashing iD (and Carmack in particular) for...no apparent reason. iD's engines have ALWAYS been front of the pack upon release, and Tech 5 looks no different.I noticed MULTIPLE idiots posting about how any games made with this will be cramped corridor-shooters. Apparently these people haven't even taken one look at Rage or the tech5 engine. Rage is an open world game, largely outdoors. It'll run nicely on pretty much anything, and will scale up so you can make even your brand new computer cry.

I'm pretty sure most of the people posting on here are on autopilot, complaining about shit just to be whiners, without any regard for whether or not what they're typing has any truth to it.

All the folks calling Id 'fail' need to get a life. Bashing Id because you think it makes you 'cool' actually has the opposite effect.

This is not the news I would have liked to hear. Mostly because I am pretty sick of Unreal Ed based games as they always look pretty much exactly like one another and it has some pronounced flaws that become blatantly obvious because 90% of AAA titles use the engine. So I was looking forward to some actual competition to it.

Frankly to me this looks, more than anything, like a tactical move by Zenimax. By keeping the engine in house I would think they are hoping to get more development companies to give them a shot at publishing their games. I can imagine their pitch to potential developers.

"If you choose us as your publisher you can use the best gaming engine on the planet which is sure to drive sales of your title and besides, aren't you sick and tired of making the same game repeatedly on the same old engine in the first place?"

Yes this seems much more likely a way for Zenimax (and Bethesta) to improve their publishing business. Frankly I expect to see more of this kind of crap in the future, as platforms become more and more restricted. I mean certainly if the only developers that could use the Unreal Engine had to publish their games through EA, you can be sure that EA's market share would pretty quickly shoot up to 80%.

So I wouldn't blame id on this until we have more information. Because I would say it is almost certain this wasn't their decision at all.

Cutter wrote on Aug 12, 2010, 23:06:Johnny and Toddy have plenty of bank and aren't really worried about it one way or another. And yes Bethsoft's engines have always sucked and been fugly, so here's hoping Tech 5 can make their stuff look good.

Its not there engine. They licensed it (the games bethesda made before that is), so you can blame the instability and poor problems on there programmers and artists. The engine they use has been used in many many many games to which many did not suck.

I said this months ago but no one believed me because I didn't have an interview to cite. Here you go =)

It's an obvious decision. Simply put, id can't compete. You guys keep talking about how it stands technologically, which is great and all. We all know that, so long as Carmack is at id, the tech will be towards the front of the pack.

But companies don't license for technology, especially not now that consoles rule the day and technology isn't moving further quickly.Companies license for tools. They want something they can use easily, that they can learn easily, and that they can get up and running quickly. Why did UE3 destroy every other engine out there? Tools (plus it's a runaway train - it may cost more than competitors but everyone knows how to use it so you make that money back in the form of time.)

In the time since id dominated the market we've had companies pop up that are solely engine companies. We've had other companies shift resources from being the absolute best tech to being competitive tech with insanely easy tools. This isn't id's philosophy, nor is it something they have the people for.

Zenimax using it makes sense - this is undoubtedly a big reason why id was purchased. I had wondered if Zenimax would up their staff to add both tool developers and support staff, but it wasn't in the cards. Instead they're just using id as an internal pipeline. The difference between this and licensing is that id needs to help the parent company learn their tools, and the parent company needs to allocate id the resources necessary to keep this going. They can have dedicated trainers in-house.

Warskull wrote on Aug 13, 2010, 03:18:Tech 4 was id's weakest moment. Tech 2 and Tech 3 absolutely dominated the market. Modern Warfare's current engine was built off the tech 3 engine.

IW stopped using id tech after COD1. they have been using their own graphics engine since COD2.

No they haven't. If you look in the credits of World at War, Modern Warfare and I believe Modern Warfare 2, it still says "portions of this software are copyright id Software, Inc." They've obviously heavily modified the tech but it is still id Tech underneath and unless Infinity Ward bought a lifetime perpetual license, id is likely still getting a small cut of every Call of Duty game sold.

I find it surprising that this came out the day after John Carmack was showing how Tech5 was so advanced that he could get a version of Rage running on a bloody iPhone with fairly high fidelity. There were probably a large number of developers salivating over that who won't get access to it now.

I liked Doom 3 a lot and loved Quake 4 (I did have a feeling that it had too little Quake 2 in it, though).

I'm not really concerned with id tech 5 (not) licensing - the only thing I wish will still continue to happen is source code releases. We got RTCW/Wolf:ET sources yesterday and I'm eagerly awaiting id tech 4's release. I would love to see the source of id tech 5 in the future!

Mercyful wrote on Aug 13, 2010, 03:29:Doom 3 was a fail, Quake 4 was a fail. Quake live a huge fail

Obviously I missed all that since I enjoyed Doom3 and Quake4 and still play Quake Live on a dairy basis ( as there are never any shortage of populated servers to play on ) maybe you have a different concept of 'fail' since D3 and Q4 made their money back and sold well, QL is/was free and is still very much alive and kicking.

Wikipedia wrote:Doom 3 was a critical and commercial success for id Software; by the beginning of 2007, over 3.5 million copies of Doom 3 had been sold, making it the most successful project by id Software to date.

PS: Raven developed Quake4 not id.

People seem to have this notion that because they personally didn't like a game it was a complete failure. Doom 3 and Quake 4 were both a success (Q4 less so on Xbox though).